


Shallow Rhythm

by morrysillusion



Category: Outer Wilds (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, impulsive feelings about chert today
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:07:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25519297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morrysillusion/pseuds/morrysillusion
Summary: You know how this works, you're used to it. The weight of its impact has no affect on you. But maybe, just maybe, there really is something still deep inside that after all these loops is getting to you.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 32





	Shallow Rhythm

**Author's Note:**

> general spoilers for the game.

The blazing yellow sun left the red rock below your boots scorching hot. It was no wonder the Nomai couldn’t bear to survive on the land and sought shelter below, and you had to be thankful your space suit could manage such horrendous weather. Though you also knew this heat was incomparable to what you had experienced at the end of each trip. This was however, still exhausting and tiring. Scrambling onto the Ember Twin before too many minutes passed, just so you could get to the lowest layers of the caves before the sand piled up too high. It was a different kind of race against time on this planet, you felt. 

This time you did not run for the tunnels though, you took a bit of your time hopping around the Attelrock and into the geysers of Timber Hearth before figuring out what to tackle next. Then, you realized you hadn’t talked to Chert in a while. A while for you, that is. Having parked your ship across the gap of the lakebed cave you took a leap across, making a solid landing with the help of your jetpack. Chert sat across the campsite, rhythmically hitting the drum that sat between their legs. You give a small wave as you approach and you can see Chert’s eyes click with yours through the shine of their helmet. 

You weren’t greeted with your typical excited fellow astronaut, however. “Say.. have you looked at the stars lately? Like, really looked at them?” Chert continued with the light taps of their drum, a little distraction from the undertone of their question. “So many of them are going supernova… But they shouldn’t be, right..? My star charts… they don’t predict them being that old..”

Sitting down across from the fire, you did not respond immediately. The stars above, you watched them. Little points of light bursting and dissolving, light years away. They were indeed burning out one by one. How strange it was to know this. To know about your sun and every other sun. But you had been quiet for too long at this point.

“They’re all dying, aren’t they? They’re so much older than we thought! Ohh.. why did I have to seek out the stars...!” Their voice started to grow anxious as more assumptions came to mind. “But.. our sun, it can’t be close...”

“Our sun is going to supernova.” The words tumbled out of your mouth without much thought.

Minus the crackling fire between the two of you, the scene came to a halt as your comment ended Chert’s drumming. “But- This can’t be true... How? How can you know?”

It was a mistake to have said anything at all. How can you explain it away? Of course you know _how_. You know why, you saw it- over and over again! You read so much in all these looping expeditions. But Chert will never actually _know_ how. “The stars, they’re all dying, every single one. Ours… will have to come too, right?” You replied, as you couldn’t save the conversation after Chert came to realize all of this themself.

You waited for a response, no longer looking at the other hearthian across the way. Your eyes were fixated on the fire in front of you. Little orange and red embers floated up and then sizzled out into ash, over and over they went. Your reality took place in this wood fire every minute and you were fine. It was all fine, you know how it goes at this point. But Chert was not fine. 

“If every other star is dying… and our star is dying, the universe is dying- isn’t it?” Chert’s voice pulled you back in, out of the fire and into the present. 

There was a tinge or an ache and you weren’t sure where it came from. “Yeah, the universe is dying.” What was so upsetting about unloading this on Chert… you’d be back again and it would happen all over, Chert wouldn’t really know it. They weren’t suffering, truly. So why did it hurt?

There was a pause. The sun darkened to a deep red behind you.

“Out of all things… We were born at the end of the universe.” It was hard to tell if Chert was accepting their place or overwhelmed by melancholy. “It's going to explode any minute now, and this was all pointless.” 

You scooted yourself over to Chert, facing the sun together as it slowly decreased in size. It felt like you were holding in some painful collection of words to say, but you had no idea what those words were. How are you supposed to speak of your death when it’s happened so much that it is meaningless? Chert’s realization of your situation was stuck on you now. It seemed like no other Hearthian but Chert had registered this painful reality.

“Play with me, until the sun explodes.”

The beat started again after your many minutes of just hearing the roar of sand and the murmuring campfire. You sat across from Chert with your hands doing an opposite dance in rhythm to theirs. The soft hide cover of the drum vibrated at each tap and echoed over the lakebed walls around you. 

“You know, you seem to handle this well for someone who’s barely been alive for long enough to enjoy space as much as I did.” Chert spoke again as the light of the sun dimmed even more. “It saddens me that this is the end we have to face so soon.”

Your hand slid across the surface of the drum, continuing the beat you had both started. “I guess you get used to it after a while.”

As you stared at both your hands as they moved, Chert certainly looked up at you with a confused grin. Hatchlings sure have had some strange ways of looking at the world. 

“The stars were beautiful while we saw them, weren’t they?”

You both did not stop the beat of the drums as the sun dipped into its tiny explosive mass of angry red and then white. You wondered about your time spent here, sitting with Chert. You did not know if it changed much to sit with them and see it all through, only to know that you could do it all again like it never occurred. As much as this Chert speaks of the pointlessness of their work on the star charts, it should be just as pointless for you to have spent the last 12 minutes of your loop with Chert. But it wasn't, was it? Not when you would remember it. That pain deep in your chest wasn’t about feeling bad that Chert wouldn’t ever understand this time loop nonsense- it was all those encounters building up in your heart. The lack of resolution behind any of it. You held the conversations of hearthian’s you cared for in your memories every loop, and it meant so much to a degree that you can’t even begin to explain it. You weren’t numb and unafraid of your own death, you were weak and fearful of these memories you kept coming to an end someday. There would be a time in which you stopped this loop, and when you did, you would have to do everything in your power to not turn back. 

**Author's Note:**

> very very into OW and had to write something eventually! had some feels about Chert so i did this as a bit of a warm up. i do have my own name for the Protag, Marble, but i didnt intentionally write them as much else here. i will probably write my own stuff featuring my character "Marble" specifically because they differ from the sorta blank slate character here.


End file.
